Wednesday, February 03, 2010

My wife and I went to see Avatar on Sunday, and I recommend it to you. Chris Matthews said on Hardball yesterday that it had to do with "the White Man and American Indians during the settling of North America." At best he was babbling about a movie he has not seen, which is ignorance, but there has been so much written about that movie that his comment steps well into idiocy territory. Familiar territory for Matthews.

I have seen Avatar, and it is easy to see "messages" in it. Anti-corporate, anti-mercenary, pro-environment, pro-primitive, anti-development, pro-human rights, materialistic pantheism & atheism, scientific illiteracy, all sorts of messages. Some might even actually be there; but how to know, short of asking James Cameron and having him admit it in so many words (Then again, a friend told me that he had heard Mr. Cameron proudly claim to be an "eco-terrorist".)

But why get one's skivvies in a knot? Lots of GREAT movies (Jazz Singer, Dances with Wolves, The Sheik, Gone With the Wind, and Lawrence of Arabia all spring to mind) are so horribly un-PC we'd never watch them, if being socially improper was a reason not to. And our culture would be the poorer for not doing so. If you like well drawn characters, if you value good acting, go see it. If you have two eyes in your head that work, even if poorly, go see it, it is BEAUTIFUL. It works as entertainment, even if it's (apparent) politics inflict blunt-force trauma. It does have a very predictable plot after the first quarter or third of the movie. So what, it has STUNNING cinematography, and the both the best CGI and the best 3-D I have ever seen. It was worth the $10 I paid to see it on an IMAX screen just as eye-candy.

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About Me

I grew up in the Air Force, and served in diesel-electric submarines during the Cold War. I worked in the steel industry until it sort of died in the 80's, then in landscape management until recently, when health issues demanded retirement.

I believe government should intrude in the lives of its citizens to the minumum possible degree, but I also know that it must be big enough to
"get the job done." To me the job of government includes concepts that are usually thought of as liberal such as stringent regulation of necessary monopolies, regulating all business enough to prevent it from becoming predatory, providing necessary
comfort to citizens who are rendered destitute by calamity outside their reasonable control, and protection of our environment and natural resources.